1873. The Hidden Link Between Metabolic Syndrome & Mental Health

Join Dr. Martin in today's episode of The Doctor Is In Podcast.

 

TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE

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Dr. Martin: Well, good morning, everyone. Once again, welcome to another live this morning. Nice to have you on with us. We appreciate you guys very, very much.

Thanks for coming on. We appreciate it. How did you like that story on coffee yesterday? I enjoyed every minute of that.

Okay, let's see. DHA new study. It helps with mood. DHA.

Okay. So like I said the other day, I'm going to do it a little bit deeper dive on depression. There's some new stuff out. But one thing we just remind everybody here this morning, your brain is made up of fat.

And let me let me give you an example of that. Therapeutically, 100 years ago, the ketotic diet was used for epilepsy. Okay. And the one who invented it was looking at fat in the brain, had these patients with epilepsy, and said, let's see if we can't fix the seizures with a diet.

Now, guys, that was 100 years ago that that happened. And what happened after that is, even though the diet for epilepsy was well documented, was well documented. I remember studying in the 1970s, that diet for epilepsy, part of my nutrition education, the ketotic diet. And what that means ketosis, you guys know this, but we'll go over it, right?

Your body is either burning glucose or ketones, fat. And the EMC, the eggs, meat and cheese, the metabolic reset, the 30-day program is to get you to change fuel. And a lot of things happen. Now we're aiming, when we develop the metabolic reset, there was a reason for it.

We gave it originally to diabetic patients. Now, stay with me here. So 100 years ago, even a little more than that, there was a connection between the diet and the brain, right? Well documented, well researched at the time.

It worked for epilepsy. And then the pharmaceutical industry got involved. And if you talk to most psychiatrists, invariably, most, I'm not saying all, most psychologists, they don't see the connection between food and brain. Now, ask a parent, you see a connection between food and brain?

Oh yeah. Now don't ask a grandparent, because they don't know how to say no. Okay. But if you ask a parent, you know what?

I just don't think I'm going to give this child sugar before going to bed. And they're going to be wired. Ask a teacher. We just don't like to give them sugar at school because because not all of them, but many of them will be bouncing off the walls.

Okay. That's a fact guys. So there's obviously a connection between what you put in your mouth and how your brain operates. Like I said, the classic example is epilepsy.

Okay. So what they did with epilepsy, they cut out the carbs almost to none. I remember this is several years ago in my practice days. I had, well, she was probably eight or 10 years old, a patient.

And the mother told me that they brought her down to sick kids in Toronto and they put the child on the ketotic diet. That was probably in about two 17 or two 16 in my office where I saw this. I'm going to say she was eight or nine years old and the mother had brought her to me, but she had already gone to sick kids where they put this child on a ketotic diet in order to reduce or fix her epilepsy.

She was getting so many seizures. The connection guys, the connection between food and your brain. Now the teaching that we do here is we talk about this, your brain up here, your noggin. My mother used to say that, your noggin.

Okay. Your brain takes 25% of your food. It's headquarters. It's like the federal government.

They want their taxes first. Right? And so food, none matter what you eat, your brain's going to take it. 25% of it.

It needs it to run the manufacturing plant up here. There's a lot of batteries up there that need fuel. They're called mitochondria. Okay.

So it shouldn't surprise us when we talk about fat for your brain and someone calls you fathead and some of you like that. Well, you shouldn't like it. Hey, fathead. I don't mind people calling me that.

I want my head, my brain to be full of fat. The problem when you look at Alzheimer's and dementia, fact, the brain shrinks. The brain shrinks. And the geniuses who run mental health pretty well, they see no connection between what you eat because they look at almost exclusively genetics.

It's chemistry in the brain. It's chemistry. Your chemistry is different than somebody else's. They always said that's what it is.

Well, we're not saying that food is everything, but it is huge. Again, I bring you back to a teacher or a parent. If you give a kid sugar before going to bed, you might have a rough night with that kid. So there's obviously a connection, but it's been lost, guys.

That's been lost. And like I said, you go back 100 years, they invented the ketotic diet, no carbs for getting rid of epilepsy. Well, I'm going to tell you something. This is something that's very true too.

Now they got epilepsy drugs to decrease your seizures. Do you know that they use those same drugs in mental health, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia? Okay. And they say, well, the drugs help.

Well, guys, before the drugs for epilepsy, there was the ketotic diet analyzed over and over again, studied back in the 1920s. And they said, man, this works. Well, do you think there might be a connection to food and brain in depression, in anxiety, in schizophrenia, in bipolar, in autism? Do you think there might be a connection to food?

Yeah. I can tell you in my practice, okay, in my practice, I had a protocol for depression, even major depression. I never talked to them at first about medication. I didn't guess I tested.

Okay. That was always my go-to. I'm not going to guess on your biomarkers. We're going to test them first.

And it was interesting when we looked at even severe depression. Okay. There were some consistent findings, almost without exception. There were a few, but not many over the years.

And again, I'm not only severe depression. I'm going to talk to you about bipolar, schizophrenia, and severe in the bipolar, severe mania, manic, and severe depression, severe manic, both extremes, like severe cases. And my protocol was based on biomarkers. Okay.

Here's what we found generally. They had, almost without exception, they had metabolic syndrome. I can hardly think of a case that they didn't have high triglycerides, low HDL, high A1C, not even diabetic, although some were, but elevated A1C above 5.4, okay, in my office. Slightly elevated blood pressure, maybe not extreme, but elevated.

Belly fat, high levels of uric acid, low levels of vitamin D, low levels of B12, low levels of magnesium. I did biomarkers, guys. They had inflammation. Their CRP was elevated.

Again, almost without exception, whenever I saw a mental health patient. So my protocol, what I did, okay, what I suggested, because, you know, I couldn't go home with them. But I'll tell you, by the time I saw them, generally, again, they were pretty desperate. They were fed up.

They were fed up. The meds really weren't working up and down like a yo-yo. And by the time they saw me, they were pretty discouraged. I talked to them first and foremost.

Once we had all the results, I talked to them first and foremost about their food. And I used the expression almost, again, without exception, about the canary in the coal mine. You know, I was explaining this to someone yesterday. Everybody has their weaknesses.

You got weaknesses. I have weaknesses, okay? Possibly even genetics. Like I tell you guys all the time, I got diabetes coming out my both ears in terms of genetics.

Both ears. I've never tried to fool myself about that. It's reality. It's who I am.

And I understand that. The worst deception, guys, is self-deception. So I used to tell these mental health patients, whether it was bipolar or whatever, look, your brain is hypersensitive. You can't control everything in your life.

Okay? You can't control trauma. You can't control your genetics. You can't control your childhood.

It's happened. I'm not minimizing it. I said, you can't control that. You can live in it, but you can't control it.

Here's what you can control. What do you put in your mouth every day? I am going to try and convince you, you have to trust me on this, that that is very important. The fuel you burn.

And guys, you know my illustration. Okay? And I used to use them all the time in the office. I said, do you want to come with me to the airport?

You know, they'd look at me like I was crazy or in a hood owl. You want to come with me to the airport? Well, let's just do it in your mind for a minute. What do they fill those jets with?

Did they bring gasoline from the corner gas station? No. They got their own fuel. It's called jet fuel.

It's, you know, 99% octane, not 93% or 91% or 89% or 87% like we put in our cars. It's jet fuel. High octane. Guys, when you cut out the carbs and you burn ketones, fat, it's jet fuel for your brain.

And I said, you're sensitive. Your brain is hypersensitive, more than mine is. It's your weakness. You have a tendency towards depression.

You have a tendency, a big time tendency to bipolar, maybe schizophrenia, whatever it was, whatever that patient was diagnosed with in front of me, I went through the same process with them. You need to change your fuel because you and sugar, brain and sugar, it doesn't get along. Don't fool yourself.

And I could bring them back 100 years, 100 years to the ketotic diet. And I said, if it worked for epilepsy and it cut the seizures down big time, maybe good for your brain because your brain is made up of fat. Your neurotransmitters, your neurons, they appreciate fat much more than carbs. And I said, for you, if you're hypersensitive and you have metabolic syndrome, you need to change your fuel.

Now, I also told them, I can't go home with you. I can't. I can't do this for you. You've got to do it.

And you're almost going to have to block your ears because you're going to have a lot of people around you telling you, don't be silly, don't be stupid, don't be stupid. Don't be silly eating meat and living on it and eggs and living on that stuff and good dairy. That can't be good for you. I think that guy that you saw there, that Dr.

Martin, he's a quack. I said, well, you're going to get those voices around you and they mean well. I'm sure they do, but they don't know what they're talking about. And how's that worked for you so far listening to what they're saying?

Even the meds. You know, I always said this about antidepressants and SSRIs and they got a shelf life. It's like metformin or insulin. It sort of has a shelf life.

What do I mean by that? Well, it never ends well. It don't end well. You're a diabetic and you're on medication.

And I'm not telling you not to stop the medication, but if you're a diabetic and you're on medication and that's what you're doing, you eat what you feel like and then you just adjust your insulin or you adjust the metformin as a medication or you might even use a GLP, you know, like Wegovy or Wegovy or Wigovy or whatever they call it.

Oh, it's simple. It has a shelf life because diabetes is food. It's food. You don't process sugars properly.

You and carbs don't get along. It's the same thing in mental health. You and carbs don't get along. Your brain headquarters, it's asking for fat and protein, not carbohydrates.

They burn too fast for you. You're the canary in the coal mine. It's the way you're built. Hey, don't kick yourself.

Start with that. You gotta eat, right? Yep. Well, let's fix that.

Fix that. Give me 30 days of your life. 30. Listen, Linda, for 30 days.

Trust me. You'll see that you got a bad relationship with carbohydrates. I'm not saying all carbs are bad. I'm saying you with mental health issues have a bad relationship with carbohydrates.

You don't get along. You're gonna find that out once you start this program of eating. It's gonna lower your insulin. What does insulin got to do with mental health?

A lot. The fluctuations of fuel. You're giving your brain the wrong fuel and you're the canary in the coal mine. You're that canary and you need to change it.

And then, of course, part of the protocol was every deficiency that you have, we're going to address it. Here's your vitamin D numbers. Here's your vitamin D numbers. They're not optimized.

You're low. We're gonna fix that. It's easy to fix. You're low in B12.

Well, my doctor didn't tell me that. I know. Because they don't know the connection between your brain and B12. They don't see it.

Nobody taught them in school. They weren't taught that B12 is important for the brain. They weren't taught in school that vitamin D is important for your brain. They weren't taught in school that omega-3, especially DHA, 60% of your brain is made up of that fat.

They weren't taught that in school. So how do you expect them to look at mental health other than, oh, it's a chemical imbalance. Therefore, we're going to give you medications to try and level that out. They never looked at it as a fuel problem.

And what happens? You know what today, folks, is it just because we're better at diagnosing it? Someone said this to me the other day, okay? I mean it.

On autism. Well, Dr. Martin, there was always autism. We just didn't know how to diagnose it.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe. I'm an old goat. In school, I didn't even learn about autism.

I learned about bipolar. I learned about schizophrenia. I learned about depression. I didn't learn anything about autism.

I learned about, in those days in the 70s, ADD and ADHD a little bit. Not much. But holy smokes, guys, to equate what we see today in one out of, I don't know exactly, is it one out of 18? Is it one out of 20?

Is it one out of 30 kids born in Canada and the United States are autistic today? Come on now. We never saw that kind of numbers before. Well, what's changed?

Environment? Yep, that's changed. What's changed? The amount of vaccines they get?

Yeah, that's changed. The antibiotics that wipe out, that carpet bomb, mummy's microbiome, and thus baby's microbiome? That's changed. Does that have an effect on baby?

Yeah, I think so. And guys, you see, when it comes to mental health, they almost completely dismiss food because they're not trained. They're not trained in food. Doctors are not trained in food.

They leave that to the dieticians. They have their own, oh, you guys had this school on nutrition. We're not going to learn anything on food. And guys, this is why that we got worse mental health today than ever before.

The numbers are astounding. The number of people on antidepressants and antipsychotics are like it's, guys, it is mind boggling. But I relate mental health. I don't separate headquarters from the rest of the body in the sense that I know what you put in your mouth is going to affect your brain.

I got a lot of young kids in my office, hundreds and hundreds of them over the years with ADHD. Adults, ADHD. I said, well, I'm going to talk to you about how your brain is made up of. Fat.

And right now, your brain is swimming in a fuel that it can't use. Glucose. It's swimming in. You like my illustration of you're swimming in the Atlantic, but you can't drink the water?

Right? That's what happens in the brain. It's saturated with sugar and the mitochondria, the battery pack, they excel with fat, not sugar. So again, that was my protocol and how I operated.

And guys, look, I didn't have all the answers. I didn't. But I said, look, you're desperate, right? You came to see me, you're desperate.

Okay, let's trust me for 30 days. It's going to be drastic, but it works. It works. But you got to do it.

I can do it for you. Not always easy. The compliance wasn't always easy. With kids, I taught them.

You love pizza, don't you? I love pizza. Yeah. I said, okay, we're going to change that.

Well, you can have pizza, one piece, and then you're going to eat only the toppings. Don't eat the bread because it turns to sugar in five seconds. Don't eat that crust. Got it?

You're the canary in the coal mine. You don't process it properly. Okay, so I'm going to tell you the answer. Okay.

I only got through one study today. The one on DHA and your brain. Okay. Friday is what, guys?

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